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Editorial Comment — November 2012

There's a Reason They Call It an 'Earned Benefit' ...

Now that the election results are
in, with the reelected President
calling for healing and cooperation on
key issues such as the deficit, much work
remains to be done on Congress's return
to Washington. In the few remaining
weeks of 2012, the struggle will be to
find a way to avert sequestration, avoid
the fiscal cliff, and to pass Defense authorization
and appropriations bills. At
least one hopes there is a will on the Hill
to get these things accomplished.

Just before Congress went on recess,
and hours after the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) released
its sequestration plan — which
included a 10-percent, $155-million
cut to the commissary budget, including
a 9.4-percent, $25-million cut to the
patrons' surcharge fund — Pentagon
Comptroller Robert F. Hale and the vice
chiefs of the military services delivered
an alarming summation of the impacts
sequestration might have on every aspect
of national security — affecting
everything from the ability to address
immediate military missions, to troop
health, readiness, morale, training,
maintenance and modernization.

And commissaries and exchanges
fall right there, under the word “readiness”
— military personnel, Guard, reserves,
all their families, and the family
systems that support them. In October,
the President vowed that sequestration
would not happen, but unless some far-reaching
agreement is accomplished,
the cuts will take effect under the law.

Tied to readiness is the concept of
an “earned benefit,” (wonder whatever
happened to that idea as OMB recommended
salami-slicing the commissary
budget along with every other item it
deemed non-exempt?). As decisions are
made in the next few months — assuming
more interesting ways of kicking
the can down the road aren't discovered
— let's never forget that commissaries
and exchanges constitute a benefit that
military patrons have earned through
their service and sacrifice, as have the
retirees with 20 years' service, who
went before them.

What's disconcerting in the current
scenario is the possibility that military
resale — which falls in the nebulous
area of Working Capital funds — will
be lost in the rush and shuffle of much
larger pieces of the budget pie. Military
personnel and their families have
taken enough of a hit already during
11 years of conflict, and commissaries
have sliced millions off their budgets
through streamlining and restructuring
over the past 20 years, and exchanges
have squeezed each business efficiency
they can find (almost to a fault), through
best practices, collaborative efforts, and
yet more streamlining.

We find it almost unthinkable to believe
that the fundamental necessity of
military resale to the vast majority of
military families and retirees in times
of both war and peace seems to be
constantly hanging in the balance. Certainly,
we understand there are some in
Congress who are still unfamiliar with
the resale community's tireless dedication
to serving the military's personnel,
readiness and installation needs
and mission requirements, but it really
shouldn't still be on the chopping block
every time there's a budget issue.

No sooner have troops been pulled
from Iraq and a few units returned from
Afghanistan — the conflict there does
continue, in case some don't notice —
than it seems that servicemembers' vital
contribution to national security over
the past dozen or more years fades from
the collective memory outside the gate.
As if that weren't enough, their service
through peacekeeping, national emergencies,
natural disasters both at home
and overseas, and in peacetime (in case
that ever happens again) is also far too
conveniently overlooked.

Whatever the near and intermediate
future brings, we hope that those in
charge of making future decisions fully
factor in military resale as an indivisible
and inextricable part of military personnel
and family readiness needs, and
that they shape their budgets according
to national security requirements and
not the other way around. The servicemembers
and their families who make
our security and freedoms possible are
counting on their judiciousness, just as
those in the military community are
counted on to put their lives on the line
each and every day of the year.

6 Billion More Reasons ...

When Defense Commissary
Agency (DeCA) year-end
2012 sales figures were totaled up, we
were heartened to see they had surged
past $6 billion for the first time since the
early 1990s — even with far fewer stores.

Kudos go not only to DeCA Director
Joseph H. Jeu, Sales Director
Christopher T. Burns, and the agency's
worldwide roster of area, zone and store
executives and their staffs, but also to
industry for driving savings and building
awareness of the benefit throughout
the fiscal year.

Blink, and you might have missed
them taking a very quick bow, before
getting back on the horse and riding on
to the next set of objectives.

What's not to be overlooked in all
this is how patrons have voted with 6
billion reasons from their wallets — it
commends a passion for delivering a
healthy and relevant benefit for those
we all consider the most deserving customers
in the world.

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